The way you survive in the performing arts is by having a sense of your audience, and doing things which entertain and satisfy the audience, but in a more important way, cause the audience to question many things.

Part of my mission is simply that: to bring the world of the arts, particularly classical music, closer to people so they don't feel that it is something remote that they have to specially prepare themselves for, or dress up for.

It's easier to interest a conservative audience in pushing the musical boundaries than to involve a young audience used to very noisy, assertive music in something like Schubert or Bach because the further back you go, the less bells and whistles there are.

They are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build.

And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.

Classical music is an unbroken, living tradition that goes back over 1,000 years, and every one of those years has had something unique and powerful to say to us about what it's like to be alive.

Extreme volume in music very often disguises a lack of actually important content.